Page 63 of Captivating Mr. Second Chance

Delaney Hargrove was not only a pretty face. She was not a placeholder or prop or trophy wife or any other absurd label that made Ethan want to murder anyone who’d ever made her think that about herself. He kissed her once then towed her to him, positioning her head on his chest as he lay back. “After everything, you’re still the girl who isn’t afraid to get up after she’s fallen. You’re still the girl who can find the bright side of any situation and make a really bad day better with your laugh. You’re still the girl who’s had my heart since the first day of school when she ran into Dean with a pencil stuck in her mess of hair.”

“You remember that?”

“How can I forget?” He tangled his fingers into her hair, and he could feel her growing smile against his breastbone.

“You know how to melt a girl’s heart.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Yours is the only one I want.”

18

Laney’s brain swam through a thick fog, waking up to the sound of her name, stifled like she was in a cocoon. But then she lifted her head and realized she was in a cocoon, one made of Ethan’s arms. She usually slept on her stomach, spread out to every corner of the bed, so the couple of rounds she went with Ethan last night must have truly exhausted her that she didn’t mind sleeping cuddled up all night.

“Laney?” Dean’s voice cut through her exhaustion, and she sat up, checking the time on her phone. It was just after eight in the morning, and her brother was getting closer. “Delaney?”

She snapped her head to Ethan, still sound asleep, and hit him awake.

He blinked up at her, confused. “Huh? What?”

“Dean,” she hissed, flapping her arms in panic.

Ethan’s eyes shot open in alarm, and he fumbled for his glasses, looking around as if to get his bearings. But he didn’t have long to collect his thoughts because her bedroom door was wide open, and Dean’s footsteps plodded at the other end of the hall. In her younger days, Laney was known to be a pretty fast runner, but she’d never be able to make it to the door in time to close it before her brother saw something he wasn’t supposed to.

As Dean reached the doorway, she shrieked and used the bedsheet to cover her body while Ethan threw it over his head. If she weren’t so hysterical, she’d probably laugh because there was absolutely no way to hide his long body. Especially since his feet poked out over the end of the mattress.

“Whoa!” Dean shielded his eyes. “What the hell, Laney?” He whirled around, his back to her. “You could’ve warned me or something.”

“You could have not barged in here like an animal,” she said, jumping out of the bed and taking the sheet with her, which exposed Ethan’s naked-as-a-baby form.

Like a cartoon, his eyes got real big before he covered himself with his hands and army-rolled off the bed. He hit the floor with a loud thump and a, “Shit.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Ethan grab his head as her brother spun back around.

“What’s going on?” Dean’s eyes drifted to the floor, where Ethan was mostly hidden by the angle of the bed.

She tried to play it cool, or as cool as she could after being caught in bed with her brother’s best friend. “Nothing. Why? What’s up?”

He folded his arms, glaring at her. “This is my house, Laney.”

She didn’t appreciate his patronizing tone. He wasn’t her parent, and she hadn’t done anything wrong.

“This is my house too,” she said, sounding more like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar than a grown adult, and she hated that.

He pointed to the now-empty bed. “Yeah, but you can’t bring some random dude here whenever you want.”

She fumed, readjusting the sheet around her, in order to better go after Dean. She got up in his face, poking him in the chest. “You go out all the time and have sex with random chicks you pick up from bars or wherever-the-hell, but I bring someone home one time, and you flip out like you’re some saint? You don’t get to judge me. And Ethan isn’t some random guy. I—”

Three things happened simultaneously as her words registered with all three of them in her room. Dean’s jaw hit the floor as his eyes moved over her shoulder, Ethan leaped up from his hiding place with a pillow covering his groin, and she slapped her forehead, cursing herself and her wandering mouth.

The jig was up. And it was officially the weirdest moment of her life.

Dean pointed to Ethan as if he couldn’t believe that was who was in front of him. “Marrero?”

Ethan nodded. “Yep.”

“You and Ethan?” Dean asked Laney, flicking his finger between them.

“Yes.”

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